FriendOfDeSoto

@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Why am I not surprised? I stopped having any trust in that platform when they killed 3rd party clients. I would suggest everyone to leave reddit and watch it implode from afar.

  Yes, it stings. It’s a habit. You still have nice subs in there, communities that make you happy. But you’re fiddling as the ship sinks. That’s the metaphor, isn’t it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you're having difficulty figuring out how to pronounce "data," say database.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You say data, and I say data. Let’s call the whole thing off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the Romans had put Jesus in a box with Schrödinger's cat, Christians’ souls would be in a quantum superposition of saved and damned.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  We should all be using the name less. And I don’t mean Jesus, I mean the other one. Because as far as I know Christ wasn’t a raging, unapologetic pedophile.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do i explain “it’s raining” to my boyfriend?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Weather is expressed in different ways in different languages. The fact that English, like many other European languages, uses a mysterious “it” as a subject to say what’s going on is actually the outlier. More languages use a formula more like “rain falls, snow falls, sun shines, etc.”

  So you tell him the “it” stands for “the weather” although that isn’t true. You could more truthfully say it’s a convention and English sentences need a subject. And then you add that “is raining” also transports the idea that it is in the process of happening right now. Don’t question it, accept it.

  Learn a bit of Russian. That language is full of colorful images, irregularities, and inexplicable grammar. More so than English, probably. So you can put him in his place when he complains. Like, dude, y’all don’t even know what blue is!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some people say "I wouldn't want a government to dictate what I eat"? This would mean they'd be against food safety regulations, would it not?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Most people who say that do so for dogmatic reasons, not because they arrived at this conclusion after careful analysis. It’s the political point of small government.

  These are the same people who will probably be first in line shouting for government intervention when their drinking water is full of chemical waste.

  You can try to reason with folks like that but you probably won’t change their mind. Just try not to shout at them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would be the political effect of St Petersburg declaring independence from Russia?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But FSBhub is!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would be the political effect of St Petersburg declaring independence from Russia?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would think the sandwiches would be delivered before any declaration of independence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it ok to replace -ed at the end of a word with -t in some cases? For example, why are "vexed" and "vext" both acceptable, but "thrilled" and "thrilt" aren't?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Language isn’t logical in a mathematical sense. Every language develops its own logic over time as an unspoken consensus that only after the fact gets codified as orthography and grammar.

  The big mother language to most languages in Europe, Protoindoeuropean, has its origins millennia ago somewhere in Ukraine. Linguists have pieced together what this language most likely sounded like. It’s a game of probabilities and good educated guesses but it’s fascinating. If you’re a nerd. One theory is that at the earliest time when this language was formed, most if not all verbs were what we would call today irregular, think know-knew-known or sing-sang-sung etc. Small language communities have no problem with insane and arbitrary grammar like that. You learn it with your mother’s milk so to speak. Very few outsiders have to deal with it. And life just goes on.

  English is a true mix of stuff. The Germanic invadors after the Romans left had to deal with the native celts. They were themselves invaded by Vikings from Scandinavia and some 300 years later by Vikings that had become French. Both brought their own languages with them and influenced English. Both invasions caused situations where adults were put in a situation of having to learn another language. What kids soak up like sponges, grownups have a harder time with. So they take shortcuts in their speech. They didn’t struggle too much with sing-sang-sung because that’s a typical protoindoeuropean vowel change that exists just like that in many European languages to this day in versions of this particular verb. But some of the other verbs were just too hard to remember! Let’s just whack a -t or -d sound at the end and Bob’s you uncle. And that’s how English lost a lot of its irregular verbs. Over time this became -ed in most cases. But, as I said, we don’t follow a mathematical Boolean logic here. It allowed for hangers-on, regional varieties, and new formations of irregular forms. Burnt/burned hung on, fucked/fuckt did not. The reason is the flow of history.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would AI replacing humans in every workplace eventually make it easier for an advanced civilization from outer space to colonize us?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would think the same so-called AI that told us to eat rocks regularly, or that thinks it’s still 2024, or that “hallucinates” other stuff will make conquering our planet harder. Particularly, if these aliens are unaware of the concept of deception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have an acquaintance that have their own "password system" that involves having a "core" set of characters, plus a few unique characters for each site; Is that system safe?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say this system is safe until one password - through no fault of their own - gets leaked. Worse even, two of them. If a bored hacker sees them in a stolen list, they could go to town on all other accounts. So you should advise your acquaintance to change their system. Long passwords are great but if they repeat a lot of characters they are immediately less useful. If the repeating string is known it makes brute-forcing other accounts that much easier.

  The best advice is to keep unique passwords for all accounts. And by unique I mean not following a system like that. Long, random, non-sensical crap is best (but also most annoying) - for now. Once quantum computers become a thing, all this probably won’t matter any more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a more convenient way to do this?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People who really want to communicate with each other will find a way.

  I think English<>French is a language pair you could get instant translations with the help of Google. So there’s a tech solution that will cause humorous misunderstands but will make do. You could hire somebody who is bilingual for the first meeting to let the parents talk behind their kids’ backs.

  If they are French, they may actually be able to have a simple conversation in English but the boyfriend wouldn’t know because they lose this ability the moment they cross the border back into France. That’s a silly stereotype but I like it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So, as I said, we need to look at the legal situation at the same time. The assholery of the bank is possible due to the assholery of these OS restrictions and the duopoly of mobile OSs. Everybody wants to have a walled garden. Outlaw or at least restrict walled gardens.

  One thing politicians like to say is that they want to protect consumers. Forcing consumers into walled, privacy-invading gardens for essential services such as banking should be a change item on their agenda.

  So looking at the status quo you’re correct. I’m just hopeful we can change that. I’m also looking at these mobile compute devices in our pockets as universal ones. They can run any instruction set that doesn’t burn their hardware. All of these restrictions - chipped components, unaltered OSs, software only from one place - are man-made/big corp imposed. With a view to a walled garden. That’s where the law needs to intervene so you can bank safely from where you want.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If AI was going to advance exponentially I'd of expected it to take off by now.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We humans always underestimate the time it actually takes for a tech to change the world. We should travel in self-flying flying cars and on hoverboards already but we’re not.

  The disseminators of so-called AI have a vested interest in making it seem it’s the magical solution to all our problems. The tech press seems to have had a good swig from the koolaid as well overall. We have such a warped perception of new tech, we always see it as magical beans. The internet will democratize the world - hasn’t happened; I think we’ve regressed actually as a planet. Fully self-drving cars will happen by 2020 - looks at calendar. Blockchain will revolutionize everything - it really only provided a way for fraudsters, ransomware dicks, and drug dealers to get paid. Now it’s so-called AI.

  I think the history books will at some point summarize the introduction of so-called AI as OpenAI taking a gamble with half-baked tech, provoking its panicked competitors into a half-baked game of oneupmanship. We arrived at the plateau in the hockey stick graph in record time burning an incredible amount of resources, both fiscal and earthly. Despite massive influences on the labor market and creative industries, it turned out to be a fart in the wind because skynet happened a 100 years later. I’m guessing 100 so it’s probably much later.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Google has a vested interest in keeping Android open source. Because the moment they turn away from that more antitrust action is going to hit them like a ton of bricks.

  What’s an “important app” to you here?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But that’s not all phones, is it. If you buy your phone directly from Google, you made a mistake. Like buying one from Apple. If Google want to continue to claim Android is open source, they have to allow for devices that forego any of this crap and boot vanilla non-Google-Services Android. And if you’re privacy oriented enough, you will give up on apps that are not.

  And given enough time somebody is going to work out how you fool a modified system into booting. The problem is legal. Depending on where you are circumventing any digital locks can mean jail time at worst. We have to address the legal situation at the same time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think with PCs it will be harder to lock them down and not disgruntle consumers too much in the process. I’m also hopeful that over time right to repair will be the standard, so they have to allow for third party repair. So all these restrictions like chipped components and software only from our store will be phased out by incremental legislation. The EU is not perfect but it’s on this path. Even in the US people are thinking antitrust more often now. There is hope, however small.

  You can run whatever you like in your Android phones. Jailbreaking iPhones is also possible. All these devices are just computers that can run anything within their hardware specs. Hacking some of these things may be against the Ts and Cs or even illegal. But technically possible. The restrictions are mote political, not technical.

  Chromebooks are not the way to the future. They fill a niche in education for cheap hardware in connection with limited capabilities. They are not technical limitations, they are designed to limit users in what damage they can do. AFAIK you could technically wipe a chromebook and put Linux on it. It may violate the Ts and Cs and we’re right back at political. Google would like to develop future customers at an early age. They don’t care about the education so much as about their bottom line.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sci-fi is delightfully circumspect on how an intergalactic empire would work. Maybe Herbert’s Dune universe is clearest and he just took us back to the middle ages with sandworms and drugs, fiefdoms and nobility.

  I think whatever area shares the same government is a country. It doesn’t have to be contiguous or on the same body floating through space. It could be the size of the Vatican or half the universe.

  I suspect the definition of the word will change once (if) we make it to the stars. We have gone from nomadic life to loosely defined borders to kingdoms to empires to multinational and intranational federations of sort. These terms may no longer be fit for purpose when we colonize Mars etc. And maybe that’s why you struggle to comprehend how it would all work behind the scenes. We don’t know for sure, sci-fi authors don’t know (or don’t want to be too specific and limit themselves in what stories they could tell in the future).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I the only person who has a compulsive need to whistle the rest of I dream of Jeannie every time a door chimes on Voyager?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Normally, when somebody on the internet starts a question with “Am I the only one …?” my first reaction is to say no, of course not. This is the first time that I really need to question that conviction. I think you just might be the only one!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Like the river finds the sea, people will find a way around it. Satellite connections, just as an idea.

  Anything a chip does can be backwards engineered to fool it. People will break your proposed surveillance chip eventually.

  Most of these companies are maybe US-owned to varying degrees but they don’t produce everything in the US. Also, they would put a very high price on these government mandated chips for two reasons: 1) government has deep pockets and 2) it would keep them away from very profitable so-called AI biz opportunities.

  The pandy has shown us that with a few disruptions in the supply chain, any system that requires a cryptographic chip check to function can be sent to hell in a handbasket. I forgot if it was HP or Canon or some printer company had to teach its customers to bypass, i.e. hack their own cryptogtaphic chip checks because they couldn’t get more chips and otherwise the printers wouldn’t print. A few disruptions could also affect the censorship chip supply chain.

  The great firewall of China has also shown how creative people get to get their message across. If it’s not just human censors but also so-called AI censors it will just take creativity to a new level. Necessity is the mother of invention.

  So there are some reasons why you might be worrying too much. I think another one is much broader. The majority of Americans did not vote for the current president. If he started censoring the internet now there would be Civil War II - Now It’s Digital. The reason why Russia or North Korea can censor their people much easier is because they have never had or only on paper a brief period of liberty and rule of law. It will be much harder to control the US population. There isn’t just the one media outlet, the one ISP, the one judiciary to dominate. It’s splintered. And populated by feisty people, some of them armed. You couldn’t pull off what you suggested without much more support for 47. And he seems to be losing it more than gaining these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much has the ratio of accidental vs intentional pregnancies changed over time?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, I didn’t think far enough. Thanks for setting that straight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much has the ratio of accidental vs intentional pregnancies changed over time?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think there is data on it. Back in school I remember looking at the population pyramid. It’s a visualization of the number of men and women (x-axis, going both left and right) per birthyear (y-axis). In ye olden days, that formed a triangle. Many babies at the bottom, fewer olds at the top. You could tell a lot from the shape this took. You’d get dents on the male side that will correspond with armed conflicts, like the world wars. And then in the 1960s the pyramid with war chips in it massively narrows. At least in countries where the pill became readily available. It turned the pyramid into a tree with a big head at the top and a wide but thinner stem growing under it. I suspect now 80 years later we’re at a much narrower elongated triangle shape again. So you can probably count the shift in numbers there and put a number on “prevented accidents.” But you would have to account for other factors as well, improvements in medicine, vaccinations, etc.

  Were all births accidental? That’s a question you could only ask in hindsight. Humans have always looked for ways you prevent conception because we like to party but without reliable success. It’s only in the second half of the last century that we have come up with measures that the Catholic church really doesn’t approve of. Before that, children weren’t really planned in today’s sense. They just happened. They were expected to happen. And with most women being relegated to raising them and running the household, there wasn’t much else they could do. The concept that a wife could be raped by her husband is sadly fairly new. The patriarchy was strong. Abortion was a gamble and many women died from bad jobs of them. Most of the time, if she got pregnant, the decision was made, end of story. If you weren’t married yet, shotgun wedding. That’s how it went until we developed contraception that actually works. I wouldn’t call any kids before that accidental.

  Sure, you could remain abstinent. But we like to party.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I feel like modelling is one of þe saddest jobs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on your definition of common. When the movable type printing press came to the British Isles, the available characters didn’t include the thorn so printers used the y as a stand-in. It was the beginning of the end and all “ye olde shoppe” signs are just a snapshot of a particular time in history.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal the miracles jesus chose to do?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Did he really do them though? The reason why this is within the scope of belief is the fact that there’s no conclusive evidence that removes reasonable doubt by contemporary standards.

  Let’s say it’s all exactly as it says in the four different versions that are somehow considered canon and none of it is a millennia old game of telephone: did he choose to do them? Did his dad force him? Could he maybe not have had free will in this regard? Do we know about all the miracles? Maybe there were more! Would it be fair for us today to judge him based on incomplete records?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say that’s technically not a bad joke. It just doesn’t come across well given the context of this thread.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where on the internet would you discuss a specific case of a potential exploitation of a minor within the adult industry"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You should maybe indicate if you’re critical of this exploitation or in favor. If it’s the latter it would be easier for the mods. And if it’s the former you would lessen the inherent yuckiness people feel when reading this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s say you’re right and you’ve prevented the birth of Adolf or altered him to send him to another life trajectory. Who is to say that there wouldn’t be another mad person, naturally a man, who would rise to power and commit similar if not even worse crimes. It’s not only the person that made the fuehrer possible, it’s also everything happening in the world, especially politics at the time. So you’ve bumped Adolf but you’ve created Anton who was similarly radicalized but he wasn’t a landscape painter, he was a physics major and he made Germany develop nuclear weapons much faster. So now you have to go back and disturb Anton’s conception. Which brings about fuehrer Armin and so forth. You might be stuck in a time loop you’ll never be able to stop because you can’t control all the variables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how did you and your partner change after having a baby?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you enter into starting a family, adding kids through whatever means, and you think this should not alter the relationship, you have another think coming. Kids are hard work. First your focus is to keep them alive and out of trouble. And over time this gradually shifts towards them not becoming a-holes. This takes energy and time, a lot of it. And that’s the most common reason why some couples have much less bedroom fun. They’re exhausted. They’re stressed. People behave differently when they’re exhausted and stressed. Raising kids is a marathon, not a sprint. Ideally, it’s a series of never ending gut wrenching crises until they move out. And truth is it doesn’t even end there. Some relationships handle this better, some don’t. None stay the same. If you think that your current childless relationship is any indication of how this would work with children, and you measure it by loving attention and how much sex you’re having you’re looking at the sky to measure the sea level. Get your head out of the clouds. You have to look at how you handle problems under pressure together. How you can support each other and not look at it as transactional. If that works, you stand a chance of a less bumpy transition into a functional family life.

  Of course, every relationship is different. There are many other factors that will play a part and make shit even more complicated. I’m fairly confident though that I’m more right than wrong here with my generalizations.

  You couldn’t survive such a radical personality change? Yours changed too. You will probably not win any argument on the assumption that your partner changed into a version is their folks while you stayed the exact same. You’re just the frog in the pot who didn’t notice it got hotter.

  I’m a still married father of two.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone should convince Trump to wear colorful robes or a uniform and a fancy hat.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But we already know what to expect thanks to Stormy Daniels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Betrothal" (getting engaged) is an anagram for "at brothel".⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s where all good engagements start!

  …

  No, I mean engagements to marry.

  …

  Is it just me? It’s just me, is it. Oh, okay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Betrothal" (getting engaged) is an anagram for "at brothel".⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  qA fA qing plaH! Today is a good day to die!